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Much of the reporting about Google’s driverless car has mistakenly focused on its science-fiction feel. While the car is certainly cool—just watch the video below about a 95%-blind man running errands—the gee-whiz focus suggests that it is just a high-tech dalliance by a couple of brash young multibillionaires, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

In fact, the driverless car has broad implications for society, for the economy and for individual businesses. Just in the U.S., the car puts up for grab some $2 trillion a year in revenueand even more market cap. It creates business opportunities that dwarf Google's current search-based business and unleashes existential challenges to market leaders across numerous industries, including car makers, auto insurers, energy companies and others that share in car-related revenue.

Because people consistently underestimate the implications of a change in technology—are you listening, Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders, Sears, etc.?—and because many industries face the kind of disruption that may beset the auto industry, I’m going to do a series of blogs on the ripple effects that the driverless car may create. I’m hoping both to dramatize the effects of a disruptive technology and to illustrate how to think about the dangers and the opportunities that one creates.

In this installment, I’ll start the series with a broad-brush look at the far-reaching changes that could occur from the driver’s standpoint. In the next installment, I’ll show just how far the ripples will reach for companies—not just car makers, but insurers, hospitals, parking lot operators and even governments and utilities. (Fines drop when every car obeys the law, and roads don’t need to be lit if cars can see in the dark).

After that, I’ll explore how real the prospects are for driverless cars. (Hint: The issue is when, not if—and when is sooner than you think.) In the last three installments, I’ll go into the strategic implications for Google, for car makers and, finally, for every company thinking about innovation in these fast-moving times.

To begin:

Driverless car technology has the very real potential to save millions from death and injury and eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars of costs. Google’s claims for the car, as described by Sebastian Thrun, its lead developer, are:

We can reduce traffic accidents by 90%.

We can reduce wasted commute time and energy by 90%.

We can reduce the number of cars by 90%.

To put those claims in context:

About 5.5 million motor vehicle accidents occurred in 2009 in the U.S., involving 9.5 million vehicles. These accidents killed 33,808 people and injured more than 2.2 million others, 240,000 of whom had to be hospitalized.

Adding up all costs related to accidents—including medical costs, property damage, loss of productivity, legal costs, travel delays and pain and lost quality of life—the American Automobile Association studied crash data in the 99 largest U.S. urban areas and estimated the total costs to be $299.5 billion. Adjusting those numbers to cover the entire country suggests annual costs of about $450 billion.

Now take 90% off these numbers. Google is claiming its car could save almost 30,000 lives each year on U.S. highways and prevent nearly 2 million additional injuries. Google claims it can reduce accident-related expenses by at least $400 billion a year in the U.S. Even if Google is way off—and I don’t believe it is—the improvement in safety will be startling.